Japanese satellite's death spiral linked to software malfunction

It’s an astronomical tragedy. A software glitch is being blamed for the premature death of Japan’s X-ray space telescope Hitomi, just two-and-a-half months after its launch.

Emerging evidence suggests that an internal system error was responsible for sending the satellite into a wild spin, dislodging the two solar panels that powered the craft, reports Japan’s national broadcaster NHK.

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The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced on Thursday that it would abandon any further attempts to restore the $286 million X-ray astronomy satellite, which left Earth on 17 February but failed to establish contact on 26 March.

Software error

The agency thinks a software error on 26 March led the satellite to believe it was rotating, even though it was motionless. In response, Hitomi applied a rotational force in the opposite direction, which resulted in faster and faster spinning.

Although the satellite was designed to switch to safe mode if this happened, a wrong command that had been uploaded made the spinning worse.

JAXA says it will now review the design, manufacturing, operations and verification of the satellite and its software systems, but won’t have the means to launch a replacement for 12 years.

Hitomi’s X-ray vision was intended to shed light on black holes, supernova remnants and galaxy clusters, says Geoffrey Bicknell of Australian National University in Canberra. “The failure of Hitomi is a significant loss to the community.”

Miroslav Filipovic of Western Sydney University shares his disappointment. “This is a big blow for X-ray astronomy,” he says. “Hitomi was meant to replace the present very ageing generation of X-ray satellites, so to say we are devastated would be an understatement.”